Hate Evil

The great level is to hate the evil and not the person, for it is the evil to which we are opposed, and we must not turn the struggle against wickedness into blind hatred toward the one who has fallen into it. But Rav Kook reveals here a very delicate point in the soul: in order to truly reach this level, there must first be within us a sharp and clear opposition to the bearers of the evil itself. If a person rushes to speak only in the language of mercy, understanding, and containment, before a deep moral boundary has been built within him, he may fail to notice how mercy for the person gradually becomes a softening of the evil itself – until in the end, in the name of love, he already begins to justify the wickedness (as we see in the progressive world). Therefore Rav Kook teaches that judgment precedes mercy. First one must know that evil is evil. Only afterward can one truly have mercy on the person who fell into it.